Deportata ad Auschwitz nel 1944 con la madre, tre sorelle e un fratello, Isabella ha subito la conferma del tragico destino che in quel momento storico accomuna lei e gli altri ebrei... (fonte: Google Books)

This is a fairly short novel(ette) that can be easily read in about 90-minutes to 2-hours.

Like many of the authors who have survived the Holocaust, Isabella's story was thrown back into her face, and this great writer was accused of falsifying her own history. Isabella's youth was spent, was killed in Auschwitz, along with many family members.

But she lived. Along with two of her sisters, living day to day with the mantra "I will live, I will live!" She starved. She froze. And Germans used her poor body as a slave to their machinations.

If you want to know another story from the Holocaust, Isabella's is one to read. On the same level as the Anne Frank Diaries, Isabella's story will outrage you, bring you to tears, and at times make you smile on the young girl as she simply tries to survive for her sisters.

I heartily recommend this book. ( )

When I was asked if I would like to read Fragments of Isabella, I agreed. Auschwitz was one of the worst concentration camps of the Holocaust, so to be able to read a memoir from someone who was there would be, I knew, raw and emotional.

It is a short read, with short chapters, and even for the most part, short and concise sentences.
This makes for a one-day read that is overall, powerful and touching.

Josef Mengele is mentioned a few times, and I was astonished that the author actually came into contact with him. Of course it wouldn't be impossible, I just haven't read a memoir yet where the author spoke about actually being in close proximity with Mengele. There was just such indifference towards him, which was odd considering how he was notorious for being truly awful—even nicknamed the “Angel of Death.” Leitner was one tough cookie. Irma Grese was also briefly talked about and how she would choose specific women to be punished, mainly based on how attractive they were to her.

Because the chapters are so short, sometimes the book confused me as to where the characters were physically at, and the events take place so quickly that it's hard to wrap your head around what exactly is going on all the time. Most of the time you can regain your footing, brush yourself off, and realize what it is Leitner is describing. But a few times, you're still left lost.

I admit, Isabella Leitner's writing was a bit hard for me to read at first. I was enjoying the story, but not her too-short sentences or what seemed to me like almost apathetic emotional responses to the situations at hand. Trust me though when I say you need to read just a few more chapters—or even one more chapter—and you will read what I and others have read and thanked Leitner in our hearts for sharing.

What gripped me almost more than what happened in the camps to the Jews, was what happened outside and around them when they walked the streets and passed by everyone. Leitner says of this:
“But the Germans never saw us. Ask them. They never saw us. Come to think of it, they really didn't.”

One of the saddest quotes I found was Leitner telling herself, “...I don't know yet how people live, I know only how they die.” The author and so many of those members of the Holocaust had to watch their family members be murdered. Be burned right in front of them. Be shot down. So for Isabella to have survived—how wonderful! But how painful, to carry all those memories for the rest of her life.

With that said, you must read what her husband has to say on her account in the epilogue.
It can be a small and terrible world.

*I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review ( )

One of the most powerful Holocaust memoirs I have ever read, Fragments of Isabella is a slender volume of distilled suffering - so beautifully written and utterly heartbreaking that the reader is transfixed, a witness incapable of turning away from these scenes of horror. I would compare it favorably to Elie Wiesel's Night, and cannot understand why it is not more widely known...

"I died in May" writes Leitner, for it was on May 31, 1944 that the author (then Isabella Katz) and her family arrived at the death camp Auschwitz. Here Leitner's mother and thirteen-year-old sister Potyo were immediately sent to the gas chamber; and she, her brother Philip, and her sisters Chicha, Rachel (Regina) and Cipi were sentenced to hard labor.

Told in brief vignettes, this memoir is a searing depiction of suffering and cruelty. But it is also a portrait of strength, and of the ties of love and loyalty between four sisters, who helped each other survive in unimaginable circumstances. The loss of Cipi, so close to liberation, was perhaps the most stunning blow of all, in a book of unbearable memories.

Fragments of Isabella is stamped upon my own memory, like some sort of indelible marker, or mental scar that does not fade...I have only to see the cover to experience again that sensation of tight-chested desperation I felt when first reading it, at age eleven. ( )

This book, very short, very emotional, begs to be read in one sitting. Its the story of five sisters, a brother, their mother and father during WWII. The father, in the US, desperately seeking visas to bring his family to safety from Hungary receives them too late. The mother and youngest child are immediately murdered by the Nazis in the gas chambers and one sister dies later. But three sisters survive by their wits and one of them relates briefly the horror of that time in this incredibly powerful book. If you never read another book on this ultimate tale of man's inhumanity to man, then this one would give you enough of a view to understand the times and the horror. ( )